Can I read Rousseau on Stage : Playwright, Musician, Spectator on EtoBox?

Rousseau on Stage : Playwright, Musician, Spectator by Maria Gullstam and Michael O’dea is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Rousseau on Stage : Playwright, Musician, Spectator about?

"Following his opposition to the establishment of a theatre in Geneva, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often considered an enemy of the stage. Yet he was fascinated by drama: he was a keen theatre-goer, his earliest writings were operas and comedies, his admiration for Italian lyric theatre ran through his career, he wrote one of the most successful operas of the day, Le Devin du village, and with his Pygmalion, he invented a new theatrical genre, the Scène lyrique ('melodrama'). Through multi-faceted analyses of Rousseau's theatrical and musical works, authors re-evaluate his practical and theoretical involvement with and influence on the dramatic arts, as well as his presence in modern theatre histories. New readings of the Lettre à d'Alembert highlight its political underpinnings, positioning it as an act of resistance to external bourgeois domination of Geneva's cultural sphere, and demonstrate the work's influence on theatrical reform after Rousseau's death. Fresh analyses of his theory of voice, developed in the Essai sur l'origine des langues, highlight the unique prestige of Italian opera for Rousseau. His ambition to rethink the nature and function of stage works, seen in Le Devi

Author

Maria Gullstam and Michael O’dea

Publisher

Voltaire Foundation

Published

2018

Language

EN

ISBN

9780729411998

Subjects

Romance, Literary Fiction, Philosophy

Updated

2026-03-24